A month!?! I would say you have been quite patient with us so I would think you have all the rights in the world to bump your thread under these circumstances!

I use SuperDuper! because I had heard of big problems with Apple's Backup software quite a while ago. I'm sure someone will jump in with some insightful info on the matter. Sorry I can't help you any further.

I will post my usual backup recipe - I find this much simpler and I believe it would eliminte your problem. Using this approach you will be clearly able to see what has been backed up. Here goes...

I have always done backups the "cheap and cheerful" way. It is even easier with Macs than it was on my PC.

I get an external hard drive. To back up, I plug it in, turn it on and then create a new folder in its root called todays_date_backup. Then I simply use Finder (or PathFinder in my case) to drag my home folder into my newly created backup folder. This copies ALL of my personal data. It does not create a full blown image of my current disk, but I tend to view the system setup as transient. It is my personal stuff (music, photos, files, etc.) that I want to keep.

To make this really useful, I use a system of two hard drives, which I rotate between work and home. Each time I do a backup, I take the hard drive with the fresh backup to work and exchange it with the one there. That way, I always have two full backups at two different locations. Hence, even if some terrible disaster should befall my house (tornado, flood, fire, whatever), I still have a full backup "off site".

Note that no incremental backup software is involved or needed. Hard drives are so big and so fast these days that this works great and it is so simple. It has always been my philosophy that in order to be done regularly, backing up must be easy. Apple clearly agrees with me - I think that this is the whole premise behind Time Machine (... a FAR more elegant solution than what I do of course!).

I downloaded a program called Carbon Copy Cloner, which is supposed to basically create an exact copy of your hard drive, that way if you everl ost your data, changed hard drvies, or changed computer entirely, you could just load the copy of you external drive onto you (new) hard drive. The only hitch is I wasn't able to get it to work. Mine may be an isolated case, so you can give it a try. It's freeware too.

I bought one of those pricey "Mybook" drive, which is supposed to auto backup your information, but apprently that's only for Windows! It's still a good drive though and looks nice (in my cabinet, out of sight).

I didn't know you could simply drag and drop your home folder onto an external drive and save all your info. I was dropping each of the main folders (apps, documents, movies, music, pictures) into the backup drive. If you can just drop the main folder, that would me much eaiser!